Synopsis

POL2000 (Political and Economic Ideas) introduces the student to liberalism and its critics, as a way to understand the modern world. It takes an historical approach, starting with the liberal revolution in politics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and Adam Smith's economic theory. The course then looks at challenges to classical liberalism, before investigating the debates over capitalism and its problems in the twentieth century. We finish by looking at state-directed models of economic management and the neo-liberal critique of them. The course is aimed at developing students' understanding of different economic theories and the problems they were attempting to address. Students require no prior knowledge of economics, politics or history in order to understand the economic and political debates of today, however students are advised not to attempt this subject in their first year of university study.